As I rhapsodized nostalgic about back in August, the US Airways 2009 holiday shopping promotion was the biggest frequent flyer promotion I ever took advantage of, for myself and for others I earned over 16 million miles. After making purchases from four other merchants on the US Airways Dividend Miles shopping sites, purchases from Track It Back earned 140 miles per dollar — they doubled their usual 20 miles per dollar offer to 40 miles per dollar, and five different merchant transactions would earn a 250% bonus. That meant buying miles in unlimited quantity for 7/10ths of a penny apiece, donating the Track It Back stickers to charity would reduce the cost to half a cent a mile. The idea behind Track it Back is that you put the sticker on an item, register the…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for January 2012.
Chicago Frequent Flyer Seminar Hotel Now Bookable
While the schedule for the October 12-14 Chicago frequent flyer seminar isn’t up yet, and registration won’t be available though will be shortly, booking of the event host hotel is now live. What I do know to expect is talks from at least Rick Ingersoll (Frugal Travel Guy), Brian Kelly (The Points Guy), Ben Schlappig (One Mile at a Time), as well as Mommy Points and others — both new speakers and repeats. With hopefully 500 spots at the seminar, and certainly over 400, registration shouldn’t sell out immediately. Two years ago it filled up almost entirely and very quickly, but the registration fee was lower and included less so folks made speculative reservations even if they weren’t committed to attend. Lots of folks dropped out, some didn’t even bother to cancel, the $20 fee…
Lufthansa is to European Airlines What Germany is to the E.U.?
Lufthansa decided to stop subsidizing budget imbalances at british midland and decided to sell it offer to British Airways’ parent company, which valued bmi’s slots at Heathrow. Lufthansa also made the decision to close its Italian subsidiary. Now Lufthansa has come back to the table and reconsidered its position on bailouts: according to LufthansaFlyer, they’re going to provide financial support to (wholly owned) Austrian Airlines along with an imposition of austerity measures. Lufthansa, 100% stakeholder in Austrian, has indicated its willingness to help Austria’s national carrier as it struggles through challenges in it’s business. Austrian has plans to potentially replace a portion of it’s 737 fleet with new Airbus A319′s and A320′s but can not finance the transaction without outside assistance. Austrian has indicated that Lufthansa would be willing to help, so long as it…
Best Current Rental Car Rewards Offers
Since August and through January 31, National is running a free rental day for every two two-day rentals. They are also running a status match offer. (Hertz Is also offering status matches through January 31). Million Mile Secrets flags that Avis has gotten into the 1-2-Free Game as well: a free rental day after every two 2-day rentals through June 30, 2012. Registration required. You can’t redeem in the New York area, can earn a maximum of six free rental days, and won’t earn those days if you choose to earn miles for your rental. You can’t double dip with Avis First, either, but it appears to me that you’ll still get credit in a Corporate Awards account. For one-day rentals, I credit Avis to my Virgin Atlantic account, no coupon code required and you…
Major Hotel Chain First Quarter Promotion Roundup
Mommy Points summarizes the new Priority Club promo for the first quarter. Priority Club will award double hotel points or airline miles for every stay after the second qualifying stay at participating InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Holiday Inn Club Vacations hotels worldwide during the promotional period that runs from 1/23/2012 – 4/30/2012. If your first qualifying stay is at a Staybridge Suites or Candlewood Suites, then you earn double points beginning with your first stay. Registration is required. So this is in addition to the first quarter stay X, earn Y bonuses, which is good, Priority Club needs to give out lots of points since they’re devaluing on January 18 (although ‘in the know’ members will still be able to call to ask for previous award pricing for…
The TSA’s Own Best Arguments Make the Case for its Irrelevance
Bruce Schneier offes commentary on the TSA’s “Top 10 Good Catches of 2011” The TSA is great at trumpeting anything close to what it considers to be a success but nowehre on its top 10 list is a terrorist. They didn’t catch any. Schneier points out that the firearms and knives brought to the checkpoint by forgetful passengers would have been caught by the very same screening procedures that existed pre-9/11, the TSA offers no value add there. And that the number one good catch, small chunks of C4 explosives in a passenger’s checked bag, was found on the return flight meaning that the TSA didn’t even find it on the outbound. The P.R. spin doesn’t stop though, this isn’t an agency that can admit fallibility, it’s defending its decision to confiscate that cupcake in…
American Miles Becoming Increasing Valuable for Aspirational First Class Award Redemptions, While Star Alliance Programs Become Harder to Use
If you want business class all over the world, it’s hard to beat Star Alliance (although American miles, and oneworld, have Star beat for North America to South America by a wide margin – great availability on both American and on LAN). But if you want first class awards, departing from North America, Star (e.g. United/Continental and US Airways) has really fallen down several notches while American Airlines miles have gotten more useful. Star Alliance used to be my go to, all over the world, but recently it’s been much much more difficult to get first class awards departing the U.S.: Singapore Airlines used to be hard, but possible, usually just for a single seat at a time. Now that they no longer serve any U.S. routes with the old first class on the 747,…
Mileage Running Really IS a Different Sort of Travel: Celebrities at the Checkpoint and Kids on a Plane
I’ve long been jealous of the strange flying experiences that seem to seek out Lucky. Very little strange seems to happen to me in my travels, and I finally had a bit of contrast this weekend to reflect on why that is. I fly mostly at peak business travel times. The planes are filled largely with very frequent flyers, business travelers who know the drill. I avoid flying at peak holiday times, the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving or the Sunday after for instance, “Amateur Day” as it were. (At least domestically.. I’ll go away on major holidays but usually flying long haul.) When I go somewhere for the weekend, I’m flying to interesting places when all of the interesting people are leaving those interesting places. Mileage running, or arranging travel without the constraints of a…
How to Use Hidden City and Throwaway Ticketing to Save Money on Airfare
Airlines often price tickets from one city to another through a hub cheaper than flights that terminate at the hub. That’s because there may be more competition between the two cities that are cheaper. And this presents an opportunity called “hidden city ticketing” — you buy the flight to the cheaper destination, connecting where you really want to go, and just get off the plane at your ‘true’ arrival point. (Throwing away the final segment, throwaway ticketing.) For those who think I’m somehow breaking secret ground here, the post was actually inspired by a recent useful thread on Milepoint and even further I’d note that Nate Silver wrote this up in some detail in the New York Times back in May. Here’s Silver’s explanation: Passengers flying to or from airports that are dominated by a…
Award Wallet Implements Workaround to Continue Helping Members Utilize their American AAdvantage Accounts
Back in December, American Airlines forced Award Wallet to stop checking AAdvantage accounts, claiming that their servers contacting American’s were a violation of American’s website terms and conditions, and that storing member passwords and account information was as well. The battle began to heat up in October or at least that’s when the Wall Street Journal reported on it. Oddly enough, American lets Points.com do precisely those things. Of course American has a business relationship with Points.com. American would say that they ‘trust’ Points.com, though they don’t apparently have a formal program or certification standards. Further, Award Wallet is actually a partner of Points.com. That doesn’t seem to create concern for American in their trusting of Points.com, yet they still don’t want Award Wallet accessing their site. It’s suggestive that something else entirely is going…
